Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Obama: GOP Takes Pride In Being Ignorant At a town hall meeting in Berea , Ohio, today, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, pushed back against the GOP attack on his advice to a voter last week that having a tuned up car and fully inflated tires would help save energy. "Let me make a point about efficiency, because my Republican opponents - they don't like to talk about efficiency," Obama said. ... "Now two points, one, they know they're lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they're making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant. <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=7134fbe53c44a3bc4afc080196ca75ac"; height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=7134fbe53c44a3bc4afc080196ca75ac"; style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> - The Huffington Post News Editors [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 3:55:46 PM    comment []

Iraqi government expected to have $79 billion surplus.. A new report by the Government Accountability Office estimates that the “soaring price of oil will leave the Iraqi government with a cumulative budget surplus of as much as $79 billion by year[base ']Äôs end.” Federal lawmakers have responded angrily to the news, noting that the U.S. government has spent $42 billion for the stabilization and reconstruction in Iraq since 2003. From a statement by House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA): This report is going to make a lot of American families very angry. The record gas prices they are paying have turned into an economic windfall for Iraq. But the Iraqi government isn[base ']Äôt spending the money on rebuilding. American taxpayers are paying that bill too. This doesn[base ']Äôt make any sense, and the Bush Administration never should have let this happen. The report also notes that although the Iraqi government has allocated $28 billion for similar improvements, it has spent less than $4 billion. (HT: Atrios) Digg It! [Think Progress] 2:29:08 PM    comment []

FLASHBACK: McCain Claimed That ‘Americans Are Overall Better Off’ Under Bush. Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign has released its latest tv ad today, attempting to distance the senator from President Bush. From the ad’s narration: Washington’s broken. John McCain knows it. We’re worse off than we were four years ago. Only McCain has taken on big tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties. He’ll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again. He’s the original maverick. Watch it: This statement actually isn’t so maverick. During a January debate at the Reagan Library, McCain stated that Americans were “overall are better off” than they were eight years ago. Watch it: In April, McCain also said that under the Bush administration, “you could make an argument that there[base ']Äôs been great progress economically over that period of time.” [Think Progress] 11:52:44 AM    comment []

Is Obama's Lead In Gallup Polls Stable Or Volatile? If your heart stops with every dip and bump registered by Gallup's daily tracking poll, here's some welcome news: the race is more stable than you might think. Emory University Political Science Professor Alan Abramowitz sends along a couple of interesting graphs that each plot Barack Obama's consistent lead over John McCain in the presidential race. In the first graph, each daily tracking poll since the end of the Democratic primary season is charted as a distinct data point, making for what looks like a wild ride: Having some fun with those who would over-interpret this graph, Abramowitz said: "Look--Obama is surging! OMG, Obama's support is collapsing. No wait, he's surging again! Oh no, he's collapsing again! What happened to that 9 point lead? McCain's strategy must be working. All is lost--the end is near! I knew we should have nominated Hillary!" Then Abramowitz steps back a bit, averaging the Obama lead from each daily tracking poll into 10-day data points, stretching from June 5 to August 4. Which gives him a rather stable-looking 3-to-4 point lead for Obama: Explaining the optical illusion, Abramowitz says: "When you group the tracking poll data into ten-day periods it becomes clear that support for the presidential candidates since the end of the primaries has been extremely stable, with Obama maintaining a modest but consistent lead, and that almost all of the day-to-day movement in the data is simply random noise." Or, in a somewhat shorter version of his attitude toward the ups and downs of the daily graph that gets turned over each day on cable news shows, Abramowitz says: "Never mind." <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=fb9822742fd644c273b8bedce3799696"; height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=fb9822742fd644c273b8bedce3799696"; style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> - The Huffington Post News Editors [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:50:20 AM    comment []

Ari Melber: WSJ: Obama is Fit and Black Campaign coverage from The Washington Independent. Today's Wall Street Journal publishes a correction of a weekend article that asked, in all seriousness, whether Barack Obama's health is a political liability. Here was the actual header: Too Fit to Be President? Facing an Overweight Electorate, Barack Obama Might Find Low Body Fat a Drawback The article was inane, reporting that Obama's "slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them." It was also a reach -- the author resorted to a chat room just to find a member of the anti-fit voting bloc. The voter's reply, "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," was reported as the recent writings of a "Clinton supporter" on a "Yahoo politics message board." Today's correction concedes that the "article should have disclosed that the reporter used the bulletin board to elicit the comment." Indeed. But why stop there? The article could have also disclosed the entire comment for some context: Yes I think He is too skinny to be President. Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I'd of Voted for Her. I won't vote for any beanpole guy. More important, it could have disclosed the fact that this was the only on-topic reply to the reporter's query on Yahoo. That's far below average for the Yahoo election board, indicating that out of all the criticisms of Obama, fitness is not an issue. So while the posted question was stupid -- "Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his 'no excess body fat'?" -- the reporting was worse. The article should have reported that fitness elicited scant criticism online, except for one post from "onlinebeerbellygirl." (The reporter did not identify herself as a journalist when posting the question, either.) Slate's Timothy Noah dug up the message board question, and tackled the bigger problem in a column criticizing this weird focus on Obama's physique: When white people are invited to think about Obama's physical appearance, the principal attribute they're likely to dwell on is his dark skin. Consequently, any reference to Obama's other physical attributes can't help coming off as a coy walk around the barn. A whole genre of humor turns on this reality. [A]n episode of the TV sitcom Happy Days ("Fonzie's New Friend") had its 1950s-era characters nervously discussing the fact that a black man in their midst was so ... skinny. Was it true that skinny people liked fried chicken? That they were good at basketball? And so on... The sad fact is that any discussion of Obama's physical appearance is going to remind white people of the physical characteristic that's most on their minds...Better either to leave the whole topic alone -- or to address the question of racial prejudice head-on... the press would be wise to avoid discussing how ordinary Americans will respond to the size of Obama's ears, the thickness of Obama's eyebrows and so on. Is that prohibition too inhibiting? I doubt it, unless you happen to be a political cartoonist... It doesn't help that The Journal ran a photo of Obama in a Nike sweatsuit, palming a basketball, next to shots of McCain and President George W. Bush clad in full suits. (The White House has released multiple pictures of Bush working out.) Of course, that doesn't mean The Journal is biased against black candidates. Maybe Democrats, though. The only other president featured without a suit in the graphic is Bill Clinton. From The Washington Independent. <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=c3180a0c38c226f7e9bf8f4462536f3c"; height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c3180a0c38c226f7e9bf8f4462536f3c"; style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> - Ari Melber [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:45:58 AM    comment []

Ron Suskind: The Forged Iraqi Letter: What Just Happened? What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way: The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush -- a man still carrying with $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush's famous deck of wanted men -- has been America's secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger). The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, "resettled" Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money. In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD -- as Habbush had foretold -- the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a "small team from the al Qaeda organization." The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists with Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting CIA from conduction disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil. So, here we go again: the administration full attack mode, calling me names, George Tenet is claiming he doesn't remember any such thing -- just like he couldn't remember "slam dunk" -- and reporters are scratching their heads. Everything in the book is on the record. Many sources. And so, we watch and wait.... <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=e6d39c353b70a405a6d3894e440af8a1"; height="1" width="1"/> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=e6d39c353b70a405a6d3894e440af8a1"; style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> - Ron Suskind [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:43:10 AM    comment []

US May Have Taped Visits to Detainees. The Bush administration informed all foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams visiting their citizens held at Guantanamo Bay that video and sound from their interrogation sessions would be recorded, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The policy suggests that the United States could possess hundreds or thousands of hours of secret taped conversations [...] [CommonDreams.org » Headlines07] 10:54:28 AM    comment []